SPEECHES 


HENRY  CABOT  LODGE 


c- 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT    LOS  ANGELES 


SPEECHES 


BY 


HENRY   CABOT   LODGE 


BOSTON    AND    NEW    YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 

(Cfce  Ktonite  £re«, 
1892 


Copyright,  1892, 
BY  HENRY  CABOT  LODGE. 

All  rights  reserved. 


The  Riverside  Press,  Cambridge,  Mast.,  U.  S.  A. 
Electrotyped  and  Printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  &  Co. 


From  many  words  which  passed  with  the 
hour  of  speech,  I  save  these  few,  because  I  am 
glad  to  have  spoken  them,  and  because  there  are 
friends  of  mine  who  are  kind  enough  to  wish 
to  keep  them.  For  myself,  I  take  the  pleasure 
of  inscribing  them  to  my  friend  Theodore  Roose- 
velt, in  token  of  personal  affection,  and  of  ad- 
miration for  his  work  as  a  historian  and  for  his 
services  as  a  public  man. 


45335S 


CONTENTS. 

ua 

THE  INDEPENDENT  SPIRIT  OF  THE  PURITANS 1 

December  22,  1884. 

THE  USES  AND  RESPONSIBILITIES  OF  LEISURE 11 

v       March  23,  1886. 
THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GRAY 25 

June  17,  1887. 
THE  PURITANS 31 

December  22,  1887. 
HARVARD  COLLEGE  IN  POLITICS 37 

November  22,  1888. 
THE  DAY  WE  CELEBRATE 41 

December  21,  1888. 
INTERNATIONAL  COPYRIGHT 49 

May  2,  1890. 
THE  CIVILIZATION  OF  THE  PUBLIC  SCHOOL.    A  REPLY     .    .    67 

January  13,  1890. 
MASSACHUSETTS 65 

October  23, 1891. 


THE  INDEPENDENT  SPIRIT  OP  THE 
PURITANS. 

IN  ANSWER  TO  A  TOAST  AT  THE  DINNER  OF  THE  NEW 

ENGLAND  SOCIETY  OF  NEW  YORK, 

DECEMBER  22,  1884. 


THE  INDEPENDENT  SPIRIT  OF  THE 
PURITANS. 


IT  is  no  slight  trial  for  a  Massachusetts  man,  especially 
for  one  of  the  younger  generation,  to  be  called  upon  to 
Speak  in  this  presence,  where  Choate  and  Webster  spoke 
in  bygone  days  and  where  the  melodious  echoes  of  their 
eloquence  ever  seem  to  linger.  The  shy  and  retiring  dis- 
position so  characteristic  of  the  sons  of  New  England, 
and  which  so  often  hinders  their  worldly  success,  becomes 
at  such  a  moment  really  oppressive.  I  can  only  escape 
from  it  by  reflecting  that  this  is  one  of  the  rare  occasions 
when  it  is  fair  that  we  should  all  throw  aside  the  native 
modesty  of  our  race  and  utter  boldly  the  favorable  opin- 
ions which  we  really  entertain  in  regard  to  the  Puritans 
and  their  descendants. 

For  more  than  three  quarters  of  a  century  your  so- 
ciety has  gathered  here  in  the  metropolis  of  the  nation  to 
commemorate  the  founding  of  that  little  group  of  common- 
wealths known  as  New  England.  The  best  thing  we  can 
say  of  that  event  is  that  it  is  one  of  the  great  facts  in 
human  progress  which  really  deserves  to  be  freshly  remem- 
bered. We  are  honestly  and  frankly  proud  to  be  the  de- 
scendants of  men  who  placed  upon  the  roadside  of  history 
such  a  milestone  as  Plymouth  Rock.  Yet  behind  this 
pride  there  is  a  gentler  but  even  stronger  feeling,  gentler 


4     THE  INDEPENDENT  SPIRIT  OF  THE  PURITANS. 

because  it  springs  from  love  of  home,  stronger  because  its 
roots  are  entwined  among  our  heart-strings. 

The  lands  to  which  Nature  has  been  most  prodigal  are 
by  no  means  those  which  are  dearest  to  their  children. 
New  England  has  a  harsh  climate,  a  barren  soil,  a  rough 
and  stormy  coast,  and  yet  we  love  it,  even  with  a  love 
passing  that  of  dwellers  in  more  favored  regions.  Na- 
ture, niggard  in  material  gifts,  has  yet  been  gracious 
there  in  all  that  appeals  to  the  eye  or  touches  the  heart, 
and  we  love  the  Puritan  land  for  mountain  and  river,  for 
hillside  and  valley,  for  rugged  cliffs  and  high  sand-dunes, 
with  the  measureless  sea  ever  murmuring  beneath.  Be- 
yond all  and  above  all,  we  love  New  England  for  what  is 
there  enshrined :  the  graves  of  her  honored  dead ;  the 
hallowed  spots  where  great  deeds  were  wrought ;  the  mem- 
ories of  the  men  who  gave  their  labors  and  their  lives  to 
the  service  of  their  country  and  mankind. 

The  independent  spirit  of  New  England !  That  was 
a  chief  quality  of  the  Puritans,  and  the  day  we  cele- 
brate marks  the  opening  of  the  long  struggle  of  our 
people  for  independence  of  foreign  control  and  foreign 
influence.  The  beginning  was  made  in  a  period  of  intense 
religious  ferment,  and  bore  the  scars  of  the  time.  Pilgrim 
and  Puritan  alike  sought  freedom  to  worship  God,  but  it 
was  freedom  for  themselves  that  they  might  worship  God 
in  their  own  fashion,  in  this  new  world,  and  not  at  all 
freedom  of  worship  for  any  one  who  chanced  that  way 
with  different  opinions  as  to  creeds  and  tenets.  Indepen- 
dence, unfortunately,  is  not  always  synonymous  with  a 
generous  breadth  and  just  liberality  of  opinion  ;  at  least 
it  was  not  in  the  seventeenth  century.  The  Puritan  set 
up  his  independent  church,  and  then  made  every  one  come 
into  it  on  pain  of  death  or  banishment, — punishments 


THE  INDEPENDENT  SPIRIT  OF  THE  PURITANS.       5 

which  he  inflicted  upon  all  recalcitrants  with  characteristic 
vigor  and  promptness.  Yet  whatever  we  may  think  of  his 
methods,  he  achieved  his  religious  independence,  and  his 
church  was  his  own,  and  not  that  of  some  one  else  across 
the  water. 

That  same  Puritan  spirit  of  hostility  to  foreign  control 
and  foreign  influence  has  traveled  far  and  fast  since  then. 
Its  path  has  lain  across  the  battlefields  of  the  Revolution 
and  over  the  bloody  decks  of  fighting  frigates  in  the  war 
of  1812,  but  its  mission  and  its  work  have  ever  been  the 
same.  The  last  vestiges  of  foreign  influence  upon  our 
habits  of  thought  seemed  to  vanish  in  the  battle  smoke  of 
'the  civil  war,  which  destroyed  our  previous  morbid  sensi- 
bility to  foreign  opinion,  and  left  us 

"  Self-schooPd,  self-scaim'd,  self-honored,  self-secure." 

Yet  although  much  was  then  accomplished,  all  was  not 
done.  The  imitative  colonial  propensity  of  mind  still 
dwells  with  us.  There  is  still  work  for  the  Puritan  spirit 
which  would  go  its  own  way  and  think  its  own  thoughts. 
It  is  not  altogether  our  own  church,  even  now  in  the 
world  of  ideas  ;  in  art,  and  literature,  and  among  certain 
elements  of  our  society.  Who,  for  instance,  has  not  heard 
the  profound  saying  that  in  this  country  nature  does  not 
lend  itself  to  art?  Have  we  not,  then,  the  glories  of 
morning  and  of  evening,  the  mists  of  dawn,  the  radiance 
of  midday,  "the  lightning  of  the  noontide  ocean,"  the 
infinite  beauties  of  sea  and  sky,  of  river  and  mountain  ? 
When  nature  does  not  lend  itself  to  art  it  is  because  there 
is  no  art  able  to  borrow.  Let  the  right  men  come  in  the 
right  spirit  and  they  will  have  no  trouble  with  nature. 

Thanks  to  the  ever-increasing  number  of  goodly  work- 
ers, the  spirit  of  dependence  on  foreign  ideas  is  fast  dis- 


6     THE  INDEPENDENT  SPIRIT  OF  THE  PURITANS. 

appearing  from  our  literature.  Yet  I  took  up  an  Anglo- 
American  or  "  International  "  volume  the  other  day,  and 
the  burden  of  the  first  few  pages  seemed  to  be  that  one 
could  not  sketch  Fifty-third  Street.  That  is,  indeed,  a 
most  appalling  thought.  But,  after  all,  who  wants  to 
sketch  Fifty-third  Street  ?  We  know  it  is  not  as  pic- 
turesque as  the  Grand  Canal  of  Venice,  and  we  also 
know  that  these  things  are  but  trappings  in  literature. 
The  conditions  of  French  or  English  life  are  not  ours, 
and  are  false  for  us.  Our  literature  must  accept,  and  is 
accepting  in  the  right  spirit,  our  own  conditions,  and  it  will 
find,  as  indeed  it  has  found,  the  best  inspiration  at  the 
true  source,  ever  old  and  ever  new,  —  the  wellspring  of 
human  passion  and  human  emotion,  as  full  of  life  here 
to-day  as  when  Homer  sang  of  Helen's  beauty  and  Achil- 
les' wrath. 

Most  of  all,  however,  do  we  need  the  Puritan  spirit  in 
certain  elements  of  our  society.  The  number  of  men  to 
whom  inherited  fortune  brings  education  and  command  of 
time  without  effort  on  their  part  is  ever  increasing.  Do 
they  avail  themselves  fully  of  their  opportunities,  or  are 
they  too  apt  to  pass  their  days  in  a  vain  search  for  distrac- 
tions and  a  mournful  regret  that  this  country  is  not  some 
other  country  ?  I  am  happy  to  believe  that  this  is  the  very 
worst  country  in  the  world  for  an  idler.  But  to  the  man 
with  health,  wealth,  education,  and  unlimited  command  of 
time,  —  in  other  words,  to  the  man  who  owes  most  to  his 
country,  —  here  are  better  opportunities  and  higher  duties 
than  anywhere  else.  I  am  not  going  to  make  the  familiar 
plea  that  young  men  of  education  and  wealth  ought  to 
perform  their  obvious  duties  as  citizens.  There  has  been 
plenty  of  sound  argument  and  good  advice  offered  on 
that  score,  and  the  proposition  is  well  understood. 


THE  INDEPENDENT  SPIRIT  OF  THE  PURITANS.     7 

But  this  is  not  all.  In  this  question  lie  deeper  mean- 
ings. There  is  a  very  real  danger  that  the  growth  of 
wealth  here  may  end  by  producing  a  class  grounded  on 
mere  money,  and  thence  class  feeling,  a  thing  noxious, 
deadly,  and  utterly  wrong  in  this  country.  It  lies  with 
the  men  of  whom  I  have  spoken  to  strangle  this  serpent 
at  its  birth.  They  cannot  do  this,  however,  unless  they 
are  in  full  sympathy  with  the  American  people  and  with 
American  ideas ;  and  to  this  sympathy  they  can  never 
come  by  living  in  Europe,  by  mimicking  foreign  habits, 
by  haunting  well-appointed  clubs,  or  by  studying  our  pub- 
lic affairs  in  the  columns  of  a  Saturday  Review,  home- 
made or  imported.  They  must  go  to  work.  Philanthropy 
and  public  affairs  need  such  men,  because  they  can  give 
what  others  cannot  spare  —  time  and  money.  There  is  a 
great  field  in  politics.  Before  they  enter  in,  let  them 
take  to  themselves  not  only  the  high  and  self-respecting 
spirit  of  the  Puritan,  but  also  his  fighting  qualities,  his 
dogged  persistence,  and  another  attribute  for  which  he 
was  not  so  conspicuous,  —  plenty  of  good  nature.  They 
will  need  all  these  weapons,  for  it  is  no  primrose  path. 
They  must  be  prepared  to  meet  not  only  the  usual  abuse, 
but  also  much  and  serious  prejudice.  They  must  not 
mind  defeats  and  hard  work.  If  their  conception  of  duty 
differs  from  that  of  their  accustomed  friends  and  allies, 
they  must  not  be  surprised  if  some  of  those  very  friends 
mete  out  to  them  the  harshest  measure  and  deal  them  the 
sharpest  blows. 

Yet  if  they  hold  fast  to  two  principles,  —  I  care  not 
under  what  party  banner  they  serve,  —  if  they  will  fear- 
lessly do  what  in  their  own  eyes  and  before  their  own  con- 
science is  right  and  brave  and  honorable,  if,  like  the  Puri- 
tans, they  will  do  the  work  which  comes  to  their  hands 


8     THE  INDEPENDENT  SPIRIT  OF  THE  PURITANS. 

with  all  their  might,  they  will  win  the  best  success.  They 
will  win  the  regard  and  confidence  of  large  bodies  of  their 
fellow-citizens,  of  those  men  by  whose  strong  hands  and 
active  brains  the  republic  is  ever  being  raised  higher,  and 
this  regard  and  confidence  are  the  best  and  most  valuable 
possessions  that  any  American  can  ever  hope  to  have. 
Let  such  men,  then,  go  into  politics,  because  they  can 
give  their  time  and  energy  to  it,  because  they  can  do  work 
worth  doing,  and,  above  all,  because  they  will  thus  be- 
come truer  and  better  Americans. 

I  believe,  Mr.  President,  that  I  am  coming  very  close  to 
what  is  called  "  Americanism,"  but  of  "  Americanism  "  of 
the  right  sort  we  cannot  have  too  much.  Mere  vaporing 
and  boasting  become  a  nation  as  little  as  a  man.  But 
honest,  outspoken  pride  and  faith  in  our  country  are 
infinitely  better  and  more  to  be  respected  than  the  culti- 
vated reserve  which  sets  it  down  as  ill-bred  and  in  bad 
taste  ever  to  refer  to  our  country  except  by  way  of  depre- 
ciation, criticism,  or  general  negation.  The  Puritans  did 
great  work  in  the  world  because  they  believed  most  fer- 
vently in  their  cause,  their  country,  and  themselves.  It  is 
the  same  to-day.  Without  belief  of  this  sort  nothing 
worth  doing  is  ever  done. 

We  have  a  right  to  be  proud  of  our  vast  material  suc- 
cess, our  national  power  and  dignity,  our  advancing  civi- 
lization, carrying  freedom  and  education  in  its  train.  Most 
of  all  may  we  be  proud  of  the  magnanimity  displayed  by 
the  American  people  at  the  close  of  the  civil  war,  a 
noble  generosity  unparalleled  in  the  history  of  nations. 
But  to  count  our  wealth  and  tell  our  numbers  and  re- 
hearse our  great  deeds  simply  to  boast  of  them  is  useless 
enough.  We  have  a  right  to  do  it  only  when  we  listen  to 
the  solemn  undertone  which  brings  the  message  of  great 


THE  INDEPENDENT  SPIRIT  OF  THE  PURITANS.     9 

responsibilities,  —  responsibilities  far  greater  than  the  ordi- 
nary political  and  financial  issues  which  are  sure  to  find, 
sooner  or  later,  a  right  settlement.  Social  questions  are 
the  questions  of  the  present  and  the  future  for  the  Amer- 
ican people.  The  race  for  wealth  has  opened  a  broad  gap 
between  rich  and  poor.  There  are  thousands  at  your 
gates  toiling  from  sunrise  to  sunset  to  keep  body  and  soul 
together,  and  the  struggle  is  a  hard  and  bitter  one.  The 
idle,  the  worthless,  and  the  criminal  form  but  a  small 
element  of  the  community ;  but  there  is  a  vast  body  of 
honest,  God-fearing  working  men  and  women  whose  yoke 
is  not  easy  and  whose  burden  is  far  from  light. 
.  The  destiny  of  the  republic  is  in  the  welfare  of  its 
working  men  and  women.  We  cannot  push  their  troubles 
and  cares  into  the  background,  and  trust  that  all  will 
come  right  in  the  end.  Let  us  look  to  it  that  differences 
and  inequalities  of  condition  do  not  widen  into  ruin.  It 
is  most  true  that  these  differences  cannot  be  rooted  out, 
but  they  can  be  modified,  and  a  great  deal  can  be  done 
to  secure  to  every  man  the  share  of  well-being  and  happi- 
ness to  which  his  honesty,  thrift,  and  ability  entitle  him. 
Legislation  cannot  change  humanity  nor  alter  the  decrees 
of  nature,  but  it  can  help  the  solution  of  these  grave 
problems. 

Practical  measures  are  plentiful  enough :  the  hours  of 
labor;  emigration  from  our  over-crowded  cities  to  the 
lands  of  the  West ;  economical  and  energetic  municipal 
governments  ;  proper  building  laws ;  the  rigid  prevention 
of  adulteration  in  the  great  staples  of  food ;  wise  regula- 
tion of  the  railroads  and  other  great  corporations ;  the  extir- 
pation of  race  and  class  in  politics ;  above  all,  every  effort 
to  secure  to  labor  its  fair  and  full  share  of  the  profits 
earned  by  the  combination  of  labor  and  capital.  Here 


10    THE  INDEPENDENT  SPIRIT  OF  THE  PURITANS. 

are  matters  of  great  pith  and  moment,  more  important, 
more  essential,  more  pressing,  than  any  others.  They 
must  be  met ;  they  cannot  be  shirked  or  evaded. 

The  past  is  across  the  water ;  the  future  is  here  in  our 
keeping.  We  can  do  all  that  can  be  done  to  solve  the 
social  problems  and  fulfill  the  hopes  of  mankind.  Failure 
would  be  a  disaster  unequaled  in  history.  The  first  step 
to  success  is  pride  of  country,  simple,  honest,  frank,  and 
ever  present,  and  this  is  the  Americanism  that  I  would 
have.  If  we  have  this  pride  and  faith  we  shall  appreci- 
ate our  mighty  responsibilities.  Then  if  we  live  up  to 
them  we  shall  keep  the  words  "  an  American  citizen " 
what  they  now  are,  —  the  noblest  title  any  man  can  bear. 


'  THE  USES  AND  RESPONSIBILITIES  OF 
LEISURE. 


AN  ADDRESS  TO  THE  STUDENTS  OF  HARVARD  COLLEGE, 
MARCH  23,  1886. 


THE  USES  AND   RESPONSIBILITIES  OF 
LEISURE. 


I  REMEMBER  hearing  Mr.  Lowell  say  in  his  most  charm- 
ing way,  some  years  since,  of  his  friend  Edmund  Quincy, 
that  "  early  in  life  Mr.  Quincy  devoted  himself  to  the 
arduous  profession  of  gentleman,  and  certainly  in  the 
practice  of  it  he  achieved  as  great  success  as  is  possible 
in  a  country  where  we  have  business  in  the  blood,  and 
where  leisure  is  looked  down  upon  as  the  larceny  of  tune 
that  belongs  to  other  people."  The  theory  of  life  in  vogue 
in  the  United  States,  and  especially  in  New  England,  when 
Mr.  Quincy  was  young,  and,  indeed,  until  within  a  few 
years,  was  in  some  ways  a  very  peculiar  one.  It  was 
firmly  believed  that  any  young  man  who  did  not  have 
some  regular  occupation  involving  money -getting  was 
doomed  to  perdition.  Literature  was  barely  tolerated ; 
the  learned  professions,  of  course,  passed  muster ;  but  busi- 
ness was  much  preferred.  Any  one  who  did  not  conform 
his  life  to  the  habits  of  a  trading  community  was  assumed 
to  be  totally  idle,  and  in  consequence  thereof  to  be  draw- 
ing his  amusement  from  the  source  pointed  out  by  Dr. 
Watts.  What  a  fine  refutation  to  this  doctrine  is  the 
life  of  Mr.  Quincy  himself !  A  graceful  writer  of  some 
very  charming  stories  with  the  perfume  of  the  eighteenth 
century  sweet  upon  them,  the  author  of  one  of  the  very 
best  of  American  biographies,  he  holds  a  secure  and  hon- 


14  THE  USES  AND  RESPONSIBILITIES  OF  LEISURE. 

orable  place  in  our  literature.  An  early  Abolitionist,  he 
put  his  name,  his  talents,  and  his  character  at  the  ser- 
vice of  a  despised  cause,  and  never  in  the  hour  of  its  tri- 
umph asked  or  wished  reward.  By  his  brilliant  corre- 
spondence in  the  New  York  "Tribune,"  covering  many 
years,  and  by  his  witty  and  effective  speech,  he  helped  to 
fight  the  anti-slavery  battle.  No  account  of  our  literature 
is  complete  without  him7  and  no  history  of  the  great 
movement  which  resulted  in  the  abolition  of  slavery  can 
be  written  without  ample  mention  of  his  name  and  ser- 
vices. The  busy  money-getters,  the  worthy  citizens  who 
shrugged  their  shoulders  and  disapproved  him  and  his 
ways,  are  forgotten,  but  the  gentleman  of  leisure  is  re- 
membered, and  holds  an  honorable  place  in  the  literature 
and  the  history  of  his  country.  It  is  a  noble  record  of 
well-doing,  one  that  any  man  might  be  content  to  leave 
as  a  heritage  to  his  children.  What,  then,  was  the 
secret  ?  He  used  his  leisure,  that  was  all.  Leisure  well 
employed  is  of  high  worth.  Leisure  unemployed  is  mere 
idleness  and  helpless  drifting  along  the  stream  of  life. 
The  disapprobation  of  men  of  leisure  which  was  common 
in  New  England  in  Mr.  Quincy's  youth  erred  only  be- 
cause it  was  narrow,  and  could  not  believe  that  a  man 
was  usefully  employed  unless  he  worked  in  a  few  well- 
recognized  and  accepted  ways. 

It  is  easy  enough  to  show  the  error  of  the  old  doctrine, 
and  yet  it  would  be  quite  as  great  an  error  to  condemn  it. 
Like  most  Puritan  theories,  it  has  at  bottom  a  sound  and 
vital  principle,  and  the  danger  to-day  of  forgetting  that 
underlying  principle  of  action  is  far  greater  than  of  our 
being  warped  by  its  too  rigid  application.  A  mere  idler 
is  a  very  poor  creature.  Leisure  is  nothing  in  itself.  It 
is  only  an  opportunity,  and,  like  other  opportunities,  if 
wasted  or  abused,  it  is  harmful  and  often  fatal. 


THE  USES  AND  RESPONSIBILITIES  OF  LEISURE.  15 

The  increase  of  wealth  in  this  country  and  the  multipli- 
cation of  great  fortunes  has  produced  a  corresponding 
increase  in  the  number  of  young  men  who,  fortunately  or 
unfortunately,  are  in  fact  or  in  prospect  the  heirs  of  large 
estates.  Money  in  itself  is  worthless,  and  gets  value  only 
through  its  purchasing  power.  When  its  real  purpose  is 
misunderstood  it  is  a  perilous  possession,  and  the  stern 
necessity  of  earning  a  living  has  proved  a  strong  safeguard 
and  help  to  many  men.  Given  the  command  of  time  and 
of  one's  own  life,  and  there  is  nothing  so  easy  as  to  let  the 
years  slip  by  in  indecision  and  infirmity  of  purpose  until 
it  is  too  late.  The  worst  outcome,  of  course,  is  when  a 
man  uses  his  great  opportunity  for  nothing  but  selfish 
and  sensual  gratification,  with  no  result  but  evil  to  him- 
self and  to  others.  Far  better  than  this  cumberer  of  the 
ground  is  the  man  who,  if  he  does  not  use  his  intellec- 
tual powers,  at  least  employs  his  physical  gifts  in  some 
way.  A  taste,  an  amusement,  a  pursuit  of  any  kind, 
even  if  only  for  amusement's  sake,  is  infinitely  better 
than  nothing,  or  than  mere  sensual  enjoyment.  It  is 
manly  and  wholesome  to  ride  boldly  and  well,  to  be  a 
good  shot,  a  successful  yachtsman,  an  intelligent  and  en- 
terprising traveler.  These  things  are  good  in  themselves, 
and  it  may  be  fairly  said  that  the  bold  rider,  the  good 
shot,  the  skillful  seaman,  if  he  loves  these  sports  for 
their  own  sake,  has  in  him,  in  all  probability,  the  stuff  of 
which  a  soldier  or  sailor  may  be  made  in  the  hour  of  the 
country's  need. 

Then,  again,  there  are  the  men  of  leisure  who  devote 
themselves  to  some  intellectual  pursuit,  but  without  any 
idea  of  earning  money  or  of  any  practical  result.  Such 
men  sometimes  do  valuable  work,  but  they  nevertheless 
remain  amateurs  all  their  lives.  They  may  be  credited 


16  THE  USES  AND  RESPONSIBILITIES  OF  LEISURE. 

with  an  honest  effort  for  something  better  than  idleness 
or  physical  amusement,  sometimes  with  fruitful  work,  but 
there  the  commendation  ceases.  The  first  thing  for  a 
man  of  leisure  to  do,  who  really  wishes  to  count  in  his 
day  and  generation,  is  to  avoid  being  an  amateur.  In 
other  words,  the  first  thing  necessary  is  to  acquire  the 
habit  of  real  work,  and  this  can  be  done  well  only  by 
working  to  obtain  money,  reputation,  or  some  other  solid 
value.  You  can  only  find  out  if  your  work  is  really 
worth  doing,  is  in  truth  current  gold,  by  bringing  it  to 
the  touchstone  of  competition  and  an  open  market. 

The  essential  thing  at  the  start  is  the  habit  of  thinking 
and  working.  The  subject  of  work  or  thought  is  not  es- 
sential, for,  the  habit  once  obtained,  a  man  will  soon  find 
that  for  which  he  is  best  fitted.  Even  at  this  very  first 
step  we  are  likely  to  be  met  with  objections,  and  perhaps 
it  is  as  well  to  clear  them  from  the  path  at  once. 

There  is  one  theory  which  says  that  life  at  best  is  short 
and  evil ;  that  we  are  not  responsible  for  it,  and  that  as 
at  our  utmost  we  can  effect  so  little,  the  correct  course  is 
to  get  as  much  pleasure  out  of  existence  as  possible.  Ac- 
cepting this  statement,  the  next  proposition  is  that  work 
or  labor  is  an  evil,  and  should  be  dispensed  with.  There 
is  a  conclusive  answer  to  this  doctrine,  even  if  we  take 
pleasure  only  as  a  test,  for  there  is  no  man  so  discontented 
as  the  idle  man,  and  unless  he  is  witless,  the  older  he 
grows  the  more  bitter  and  unhappy  he  becomes.  The 
only  charm  of  a  holiday  comes  from  working  before  and 
after  it.  Your  idle  man  has  no  holidays  ;  nothing  but 
"  the  set  gray  life  and  apathetic  end."  It  is  not  easy  at 
the  outset  to  labor  with  no  taskmaster  except  one's  own  de- 
termination, but  the  effort  grows  steadily  and  rapidly  less, 
so  that  in  a  very  short  time  work  becomes  a  necessity,  and 


THE  USES  AND  RESPONSIBILITIES  OF  LEISURE.  17 

brings  more  solid  and  lasting  pleasure  and  more  interest 
than  anything  else  human  ingenuity  can  devise  for  our 
diversion. 

The  next  question  is  as  to  the  particular  work  to  which 
a  man  of  leisure  can  best  devote  his  time  and  his  energies. 
I  have  known  men  who,  without  any  spur  from  necessity, 
have  addressed  themselves  to  the  professions  or  to  busi- 
ness, and  have  earned  there  both  money  and  distinction. 
It  is  needless  to  say  that  these  men  deserve  the  very  high- 
est credit  and  the  entire  respect  of  all  who  know  them. 
At  the  same  time,  while  we  may  not  criticise  such  men,  it 
is  impossible  to  doubt  that  they  might  be  more  effective 
in"other  fields  than  those  which  are  primarily  and  essen- 
tially money  getting. 

It  is  better  for  the  man  of  leisure  in  learning  to  work 
and  think,  or  when  he  has  acquired  that  most  precious 
education,  to  turn  to  the  fields  where  men  are  needed  who 
can  labor,  without  pecuniary  profit,  for  the  public  benefit. 
This  is  not  only  proper  abstractly,  but  it  is  a  duty  and  an 
obligation.  Every  gentleman  pays  his  debts  just  as  he 
tells  the  truth  and  keeps  faith.  "We  all  owe  a  debt  to 
our  country,  and  none  so  large  a  debt  as  the  man  of  lei- 
sure. That  those  who  have  gone  before  him  have  been 
enabled  to  accumulate  property  and  leave  it  to  him  in 
secure  enjoyment,  is  due  to  the  wise  laws  and  solid  insti- 
tutions of  his  State  and  country,  and  to  the  sound  and 
honest  character  of  the  American  people.  That  we  have 
a  country  at  all  is  due  to  those  who  fought  for  her.  To 
them  we  owe  a  debt  we  can  only  try  to  pay  by  devotion  to 
the  country  that  we  enjoy,  and  which  they  saved. 

The  modes  of  working  for  the  public  are  many.  The 
first  which  suggests  itself  is  literature,  but  there,  as  every- 
where else,  the  essential  preliminary  is  to  learn  to  work 


18  THE  USES  AND  RESPONSIBILITIES  OF  LEISURE. 

practically.  No  man  ought  to  begin  by  publishing  at  his 
own  expense.  It  is  far  better  to  try  at  the  doors  of  the 
newspapers,  the  magazines,  or  the  publishers,  until  you 
can  command  a  market  for  your  writings,  for  the  only 
sure  way  to  make  a  writer  that  I  know  is  to  have  him 
enter  the  field  of  competition.  When  he  can  hold  his 
own  with  other  men,  then  it  will  be  time  to  publish,  if  he 
chooses,  at  his  own  expense,  work  of  value  to  the  world, 
but  which  the  world  could  get  in  no  other  way. 

There  is  a  still  larger  opportunity  in  the  directions  of 
public  education  and  public  charities.  In  all  these  there 
is  a  vast  and  growing  demand  for  intelligent  work,  and 
for  the  most  part  it  is  only  possible  to  men  who  can  com- 
mand their  own  time.  A  man  can  win  wide  reputation 
in  these  departments,  and  render  incalculable  service  to 
his  fellow-men. 

It  only  remains  now  to  speak  of  politics.  Let  every 
man  give  of  his  leisure,  be  it  more  or  less,  to  politics  ;  for 
it  is  simply  good  citizenship  to  do  so.  Discard  at  the 
outset  the  wretched  habit  which  is  far  too  prevalent  in 
this  country,  and  particularly,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  among 
highly  educated  persons,  of  regarding  all  men  who  are 
much  in  politics  with  suspicion,  and  of  using  the  word 
"  politician  "  as  an  uncomplimentary  epithet,  and  usually 
with  a  sneer.  You  neither  help  nor  hurt  the  politician  by 
so  doing,  but  you  hurt  your  country  and  lower  her  repu- 
tation. There  is  nothing,  indeed,  which  does  more  to  in- 
jure politics  and  the  public  business  than  to  assume  that 
a  man  who  enters  them  is  in  some  way  lowered  by  so 
doing.  The  calling  ought  to  be  and  is  an  honorable  one, 
and  we  should  all  seek  to  honor  and  elevate,  not  to  decry 
it.  Politics  is  a  wide  field,  but  it  is  a  very  practical  one, 
and  the  amateur  is  not  only  singularly  out  of  place  there, 


THE  USES  AND  RESPONSIBILITIES  OF  LEISURE.  19 

but  is  especially  apt  to  do  harm  by  mistaken  efforts  to  do 
good.  Take  hold  of  politics  as  you  would  of  any  other 
business,  honorably  and  respectably,  but  take  hold  hard. 
Go  to  the  polls,  for  example,  and  work  for  the  man  whom 
you  want  to  see  elected,  and  get  your  friends  to  do  the 
same.  If  you  prefer  to  reach  political  questions  by  voice 
or  pen,  do  it  in  these  ways,  but  let  me  suggest  that  you 
first  inform  yourself  about  politics  and  politicians,  for 
politics  and  public  questions  are  exceedingly  difficult,  and 
educated  men  are  sometimes  as  marvelously  ignorant  upon 
these  subjects  as  they  are  ready  in  judgment  and  condem- 
nation concerning  them. 

'  There  is  only  one  other  point  that  I  will  touch  upon  as 
to  politics.  Work  for  the  highest  and  best  measures 
always.  When  the  question  is  between  right  and  wrong, 
work  for  what  you  believe  to  be  right  without  yielding  a 
jot.  In  such  questions  no  compromise  is  possible.  For- 
tunately for  us,  however,  great  moral  questions  like  slavery 
are  extremely  rare  in  politics.  Most  public  questions, 
grave  and  important  as  many  of  them  are,  are  not  moral 
questions  at  all,  and  form  no  part  of  the  everlasting  con- 
flict between  good  and  evil,  between  right  and  wrong. 
Do  not  fall  into  the  cant  of  treating  public  questions  as 
moral  questions  when  they  are  not  so.  There  is  a  tempta- 
tion to  a  certain  class  of  minds  to  do  this,  because,  the 
morality  of  the  question  being  granted  and  they  being  in 
the  right  themselves,  it  is  then  possible  to  look  down  upon 
their  opponents  and  call  their  enemies  wicked.  This  is 
cant  of  the  worst  kind.  All  cant  and  hypocrisy  are 
mean  and  noxious,  and  none  more  so  than  the  political 
varieties. 

Stand  for  the  right,  then,  against  the  wrong  always, 
but  where  there  is  no  moral  question  involved  do  not,  by 


20  THE  USES  AND  RESPONSIBILITIES  OF  LEISURE. 

insisting  on  the  unattainable,  lose  everything.  Because, 
for  example,  the  civil  service  act  of  1883  falls  far  short 
of  perfection  and  completeness,  should  we  therefore  reject 
it  ?  That  would  be  folly.  Let  us  take  it  as  a  first  great 
step  toward  our  goal  of  removing  routine  offices  from 
politics.  The  political  history  of  the  English-speaking 
race  is  in  truth  a  history  of  legislative  compromises. 
When  compromises  have  not  been  made  with  wrong,  they 
have  been  the  stepping  stones  in  the  great  march  of  our 
civilization.  They  mark  the  line  between  the  people  who 
are  ever  moving  forward  to  higher  things  and  those  who, 
insisting  on  the  highest  at  once,  never  advance,  but  stand 
shrieking  with  helpless  confusion,  always  in  one  place. 

I  have  touched  very  cursorily  and  unsatisfactorily  on 
some  of  the  fields  of  public  usefulness  open  to  men  whose 
time  is  wholly  at  their  own  disposal,  and  open  in  some 
measure  to  others  as  well.  In  conclusion,  I  want  to  say  a 
word  on  two  points  which  seem  to  me  of  great  impor- 
tance, and  which  apply  to  all  alike.  Be  in  sympathy 
with  your  age  and  country.  It  is  easier  to  get  out  of  sym- 
pathy with  the  movements  of  the  time  than  you  think. 
What  every  man  must  work  with  and  understand  are  the 
forces  about  him.  If  he  does  not,  his  usefulness  is  crip- 
pled. To  be  out  of  sympathy  with  your  country  and 
with  American  ideas  is  a  grievous  fault,  to  be  shunned  at 
all  hazards.  If  a  man  fails  to  respect  himself  no  one 
will  respect  him,  and  if  he  does  not  love  and  honor  his 
country  he  will  deserve  nothing  but  contempt.  The  most 
utterly  despicable  of  all  things  is  the  Anglomania  which 
prevails  in  certain  quarters.  It  should  be  impossible  here, 
for  no  men  who  have  been  brought  up  beneath  the  shad- 
ows of  Memorial  Hall,  and  who  have  felt  the  influence 
that  descends  from  its  silent  tablets,  ought  to  be  anything 


THE  USES  AND  RESPONSIBILITIES  OF  LEISURE.  21 

but  ardent  Americans.  All  I  would  say  is,  make  your 
Americanism  and  your  patriotism  living  and  active  forces 
in  your  daily  life. 

The  other  point  which  I  wish  to  make  is  in  regard  to  a 
danger  which  I  think  is  in  some  measure  peculiar  to  Har- 
vard. I  mean  the  tendency  to  be  merely  negative  and 
critical.  This  arises,  in  part  at  least,  from  a  dread  of  be- 
coming ridiculous  by  over-enthusiasm,  and  from  the  feel- 
ing that  it  is  "  in  better  form  "  to  be  exceedingly  quiet 
and  reticent.  But  it  will  not  do  to  confine  one's  self  in 
life  to  the  purely  critical  attitude,  for  it  leads  to  nothing. 
It  may  be  able  to  destroy,  it  can  never  create.  It  frequently 
makes  a  man  sour,  envious,  and  spiteful ;  it  never  makes 
him  helpful,  generous,  brave,  and  the  doer  of  great  deeds. 
Moreover,  if  a  man  contents  himself  with  criticism  and 
negation,  he  is  likely  to  become  not  only  narrow  and  arro- 
gant, but  ineffective.  To  be  well  balanced  and  efficient 
we  must  see  the  good  as  well  as  the  evil  in  both  men  and 
things.  It  is  comparatively  easy  to  stand  by  and  criticise 
the  men  who  are  struggling,  for  instance,  in  the  stream  of 
politics,  but  a  far  better  thing  is  to  plunge  in  yourself  and 
try  to  do  something,  and  to  bring  some  definite  thing  to 
pass.  If  you  attain  to  nothing  more,  you  will  at  least  be  a 
wiser  and  better  critic,  and  therefore  far  more  weighty 
and  influential,  because  more  sympathetic  and  more 
intelligent. 

Let  me  illustrate  once  more,  by  an  example,  what  I 
mean  by  positiveness  and  enthusiasm  and  by  disregard 
of  self  and  of  the  weak  dread  of  being  ridiculous.  You 
have  all,  no  doubt,  read  the  novels  and  sketches  of  Mr. 
Cable.  You  know  that  he  is  one  of  the  most  charming 
of  our  younger  writers.  Mr.  Cable  has  lately  turned 
aside  to  enter  another  field,  and  to  do  what  in  him  lies  to 


22  THE  USES  AND  RESPONSIBILITIES  OF  LEISURE. 

right  what  he  believed  to  be  a  wrong.  I  suppose  that 
every  one  who  listens  to  me  has  read  the  two  essays  enti- 
tled "  The  Freedraan's  Case  in  Equity  "  and  "  The  Silent 
South."  The  modest  volume  which  contains  them  is,  I 
believe,  an  epoch-making  book.  Not  now,  perhaps,  but  in 
the  days  that  are  yet  to  be.  These  essays  are  written  of 
course  admirably,  with  literary  skill  and  great  force.  The 
words,  however,  are  not  so  much ;  the  great  fact  is  the 
man  who  uttered  them.  It  is  the  act  that  will  live,  and 
which  is  destined  to  mark  a  stage  in  our  national  devel- 
opment. Mr.  Cable  is  the  grandson  and  son  of  a  slave- 
holder. He  was  a  soldier  in  the  Confederate  army.  He 
is  a  Southerner  through  and  through,  with  all  the  tradi- 
tions and  prejudices  of  the  South.  He  saw  before  him  a 
despised  race  just  released  from  slavery ;  he  saw  that  the 
condition  of  that  race  presented  a  mighty  problem,  vital 
to  the  welfare  of  a  large  part  of  our  common  country. 
He  believed  that  this  problem  was  one  which  legislation 
could  not  reach,  but  which  public  opinion  in  the  South 
could  alone  deal  with.  He  studied  the  question,  and 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  treatment  of  the  negro 
was  neither  right  nor  honest.  How  easy  it  was  to  remain 
silent !  He  had  everything  to  gain  and  nothing  to  lose 
by  silence,  and  he  thereupon  spoke  out.  He  faced  hos- 
tility, ostracism  almost,  at  the  South,  and  indifference  at 
the  North.  He  was  assailed,  abused,  and  sneered  at,  but 
he  has  never  been  answered,  and  he  never  will  be  an- 
swered until  he  obtains  from  the  tribunal  to  which  he  ap- 
pealed, from  Southern  opinion  itself,  the  inevitable  ver- 
dict that  he  is  right  and  that  the  wrong  shall  be  redressed. 
It  was  a  great  and  noble  act.  It  was  positive  and  not 
negative.  Mr.  Cable  will  be  remembered  for  those  essays 
while  we  have  a  history,  and  long  after  the  very  names  of 


THE  USES  AND  RESPONSIBILITIES  OF  LEISURE.    23 

those  who  stood  coldly  by  and  criticised  him  have  been 
forgotten. 

It  is  by  such  men  that  the  work  of  the  world  is  done, 
and  every  man  can  do  his  part,  be  it  great  or  small,  if  he 
rests  on  the  same  everlasting  principle.  The  errors,  the 
mistakes,  the  failures,  the  ridicule,  will  be  forgotten,  but 
the  central,  animating  thought,  manly,  robust,  and  gen- 
erous, will  survive.  Be  in  sympathy  with  your  time  and 
your  country.  Be  positive,  not  negative.  Live  the  life  of 
your  time,  if  you  would  live  at  all.  These  are  generali- 
ties, I  know,  but  they  mean  everything  to  me  because 
they  define  a  mental  and  moral  attitude  which  is  essential 
to  virility  and  well  doing.  Let  that  attitude  be  right, 
and  the  man  upon  whom  fortune  has  bestowed  the  gift  of 
leisure  will  become,  as  he  ought,  one  of  the  most  useful 
and  one  of  the  busiest  of  men.  If  he  is  this,  the  rest 

will  care  for  itself. 

"  In  light  things 

Prove  thou  the  arms  thou  long'st  to  glorify. 
Nor  fear  to  work  up  from  the  lowest  ranks, 
Whence  come  great  nature's  captains.     And  high  deeds 
Haunt  not  the  fringy  edges  of  the  fight, 
But  the  pell-mell  of  men." 


THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GRAY. 

IN  ANSWER  TO  A  TOAST  AT  THE  DINNER  TO  ROBERT 

E.  LEE  CAMP  OF  CONFEDERATE  VETERANS, 

IN  FANEUIL  HALL,  JUNE  17,  1887. 


THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GRAY. 


To  such  a  toast,  sir,  it  would  seem  perhaps  most  fit- 
ting that  one  of  those  should  respond  who  was  a  part  of 
the  great  event  which  it  recalls.  Yet,  after  all,  on  an 
occasion  like  this,  it  may  not  be  amiss  to  call  upon  one 
who  belongs  to  a  generation  to  whom  the  Rebellion  is 
little  more  than  history,  and  who,  however  insufficiently, 
represents  the  feelings  of  that  and  the  succeeding  genera- 
tions as  to  our  great  civil  war.  I  was  a  boy  ten  years  old 
when  the  troops  marched  away  to  defend  Washington, 
and  my  personal  knowledge  of  that  time  is  confined  to 
a  few  broken  but  vivid  memories.  I  saw  the  troops, 
month  after  month,  pour  through  the  streets  of  Boston.  I 
saw  Shaw  go  forth  at  the  head  of  his  black  regiment, 
and  Bartlett,  shattered  in  body  but  dauntless  in  soul,  ride 
by  to  carry  what  was  left  of  him  once  more  to  the  battle- 
fields of  the  republic.  I  saw  Andrew,  standing  bare- 
headed on  the  steps  of  the  State  House,  bid  the  men 
godspeed.  I  cannot  remember  the  words  he  said,  but  I 
can  never  forget  the  fervid  eloquence  which  brought  tears 
to  the  eyes  and  fire  to  the  hearts  of  all  who  listened.  I 
understood  but  dimly  the  awful  meaning  of  these  events. 
To  my  boyish  mind  one  thing  alone  was  clear,  that  the  sol- 
diers as  they  marched  past  were  all,  in  that  supreme 
hour,  heroes  and  patriots.  Amid  many  changes  that  simple 
belief  of  boyhood  has  never  altered.  The  gratitude  which 


28         THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GRAY. 

I  felt  then  I  confess  to  to-day  more  strongly  than  ever. 
But  other  feelings  have  in  the  progress  of  time  altered 
much.  I  have  learned,  and  others  of  my  generation  as 
they  came  to  man's  estate  have  learned,  what  the  war 
really  meant,  and  they  have  also  learned  to  know  and  to 
do  justice  to  the  men  who  fought  the  war  upon  the  other 
side. 

I  do  not  stand  up  in  this  presence  to  indulge  in  any 
mock  sentimentality.  You  brave  men  who  wore  the  gray 
would  be  the  first  to  hold  me  or  any  other  son  of  the 
North  in  just  contempt  if  I  should  say  that,  now  it  was 
all  over,  I  thought  the  North  was  wrong  and  the  result  of 
the  war  a  mistake,  and  that  I  was  prepared  to  suppress 
my  political  opinions.  I  believe  most  profoundly  that 
the  war  on  our  side  was  eternally  right,  that  our  victory 
was  the  salvation  of  the  country,  and  that  the  results  of 
the  war  were  of  infinite  benefit  to  both  North  and  South. 
But  however  we  differed,  or  still  differ,  as  to  the  causes 
for  which  we  fought  then,  we  accept  them  as  settled,  com- 
mit them  to  history,  and  fight  over  them  no  more.  To 
the  men  who  fought  the  battles  of  the  Confederacy  we 
hold  out  our  hands  freely,  frankly,  and  gladly.  To  cour- 
age and  faith  wherever  shown  we  bow  in  homage  with 
uncovered  heads.  We  respect  and  honor  the  gallantry 
and  valor  of  the  brave  men  who  fought  against  us,  and 
who  gave  their  lives  and  shed  their  blood  in  defense  of 
what  they  believed  to  be  right.  We  rejoice  that  the 
famous  general  whose  name  is  borne  upon  your  banner 
was  one  of  the  greatest  soldiers  of  modern  times,  because 
he,  too,  was  an  American.  We  have  no  bitter  memories 
to  revive,  no  reproaches  to  utter.  Reconciliation  is  not 
to  be  sought,  because  it  exists  already.  Differ  in  politics 
and  in  a  thousand  other  ways  we  must  and  shall  in  all 


THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GRAY.         29 

good-nature,  but  let  us  never  differ  with  each  other  on 
sectional  or  State  lines,  by  race  or  creed. 

We  welcome  you,  soldiers  of  Virginia,  as  others  more 
eloquent  than  I  have  said,  to  New  England.  We  wel- 
come you  to  old  Massachusetts.  We  welcome  you  to  Bos- 
ton and  to  Faneuil  Hall.  In  your  presence  here,  and  at  the 
sound  of  your  voices  beneath  this  historic  roof,  the  years 
roll  back  and  we  see  the  figure  and  hear  again  the  ring- 
ing tones  of  your  great  orator,  Patrick  Henry,  declaring 
to  the  first  Continental  Congress,  "The  distinctions  be- 
tween Virginians,  Pennsylvanians,  New  Yorkers,  and  New 
Englanders  are  no  more.  I  am  not  a  Virginian,  but  an 
Ajnerican."  A  distinguished  Frenchman,  as  he  stood 
among  the  graves  at  Arlington,  said, "  Only  a  great  people 
is  capable  of  a  great  civil  war."  Let  us  add  with  thank- 
ful hearts  that  only  a  great  people  is  capable  of  a  great 
reconciliation.  Side  by  side,  Virginia  and  Massachusetts 
led  the  colonies  into  the  War  for  Independence.  Side  by 
side  they  founded  the  government  of  the  United  States. 
Morgan  and  Greene,  Lee  and  Knox,  Moultrie  and  Pres- 
cott,  men  of  the  South  and  men  of  the  North,  fought 
shoulder  to  shoulder,  and  wore  the  same  uniform  of  buff 
and  blue,  —  the  uniform  of  Washington. 

Your  presence  here  brings  back  their  noble  memories, 
it  breathes  the  spirit  of  concord,  and  unites  with  so  many 
other  voices  in  the  irrevocable  message  of  union  and  good- 
will. Mere  sentiment  all  this,  some  may  say.  But  it  is 
sentiment,  true  sentiment,  that  has  moved  the  world. 
Sentiment  fought  the  war,  and  sentiment  has  reunited  us. 
When  the  war  closed,  it  was  proposed  in  the  newspapers 
and  elsewhere  to  give  Governor  Andrew,  who  had  sacri- 
ficed health  and  strength  and  property  in  his  public  du- 
ties, some  immediately  lucrative  office,  like  the  collector- 


30         THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GRAY. 

ship  of  the  port  of  Boston.  A  friend  asked  him  if  he 
would  take  such  a  place.  " No,"  said  he ;  "I  have  stood 
as  high  priest  between  the  horns  of  the  altar,  and  I  have 
poured  out  upon  it  the  best  blood  of  Massachusetts,  and 
I  cannot  take  money  for  that."  Mere  sentiment  truly, 
but  the  sentiment  which  ennobles  and  uplifts  mankind. 
It  is  sentiment  which  so  hallows  a  bit  of  torn,  stained 
bunting,  that  men  go  gladly  to  their  deaths  to  save  it. 
So  I  say  that  the  sentiment  manifested  by  your  presence 
here,  brethren  of  Virginia,  sitting  side  by  side  with  those 
who  wore  the  blue,  has  a  far-reaching  and  gracious  in- 
fluence, of  more  value  than  many  practical  things.  It 
tells  us  that  these  two  grand  old  commonwealths,  parted 
in  the  shock  of  the  Civil  War,  are  once  more  side  by  side 
as  in  the  days  of  the  Revolution,  never  to  part  again.  It 
tells  us  that  the  sons  of  Virginia  and  Massachusetts,  if 
war  should  break  again  upon  the  country,  will,  as  in  the 
olden  days,  stand  once  more  shoulder  to  shoulder,  with  no 
distinction  in  the  colors  that  they  wear.  It  is  fraught 
with  tidings  of  peace  on  earth,  and  you  may  read  its 
meaning  in  the  words  on  yonder  picture,  "Liberty  and 
Union,  now  and  forever,  one  and  inseparable." 


THE  PURITANS. 

IN  ANSWER  TO  A  TOAST  AT  THE   DINNER  OF  THE  NEW 

ENGLAND  SOCIETY  OF  PHILADELPHIA, 

DECEMBER  22,  1887. 


THE  PUKITANS. 


THIS  is  the  day  that  New  England  men  everywhere  set 
apart  as  sacred  to  the  memory  of  those  who  founded  the 
brave  old  commonwealths  where  they  were  born,  and  which, 
however  far  they  may  have  wandered,  they  never  cease  to 
love.  In  so  doing  they  only  obey  a  most  deeply-rooted 
instinct  of  human  nature.  One  of  the  earliest  forms  of 
religion  to  which  primitive  man  turned  for  consolation 
and  support  was  ancestor  worship.  Indeed,  it  is  but  the 
other  day  that  Japan  disestablished  Shintoism,  the  official 
religion  of  the  state,  an  ancestor  worship  which  for  ages 
has  maintained  itself  in  the  face  of  newer  faiths  and  more 
popular  creeds.  The  religious  form  of  ancestor  worship 
has  departed  long  since  from  our  race,  but  the  sentiment 
remains.  The  Chinaman,  who  reverses  all  our  habits,  has 
his  ancestors  ennobled  when  he  himself  arrives  at  dis- 
tinction. The  people  of  the  Western  world  turn  their 
ancestors  to  better  account,  by  using  them  as  an  argu- 
ment in  favor  of  benefits  to  be  conferred  upon  themselves. 
To  us  in  this  country,  where  all  hereditary  distinctions 
have  been  from  the  outset  wisely  abolished,  ancestors  are 
chiefly  useful  as  furnishing  pleasant  opportunities  of  this 
kind  for  mental  and  moral  improvement.  To  the  New 
England  er  they  have  an  especial  value,  because  his  retir- 
ing and  modest  nature  makes  him  unwilling  to  assert 
himself  or  sing  his  own  praises.  His  diffidence,  there- 
fore, finds  a  welcome  shelter  in  doing  justice  to  ancestral 


34  THE  PURITANS. 

deeds  and  virtues,  and  thus  he  is  able  to  shine  with  the 
mild  refulgence  of  a  reflected  light. 

Nothing  in  this  way  could  be  more  suggestive  than  the 
name  of  the  famous  old  county  which  you  have  coupled 
with  mine.  In  Essex  County  the  Puritan  founded  his 
first  town  and  set  up  his  first  church.  As  the  Puritans  of 
Essex  were  first  in  order  of  settlement,  so  were  they 
always  the  most  extreme  representatives  of  the  day  in 
politics  or  religion.  It  was  the  stern  old  Essex  Puritan 
John  Endicott  who  cut  St.  George's  cross  from  the  Eng- 
lish flag  because  it  savored  of  idolatry.  It  was  an  Essex 
clergyman  who  was  cast  out  of  his  pulpit  because  he  led 
his  townsmen  in  a  refusal  to  pay  illegal  impositions  to 
Andros,  as  John  Hampden  had  refused  ship  money  to 
Charles  I.  It  was  in  Essex  that  resistance  was  organized 
to  the  domination  of  the  capital ;  and  it  was  in  Essex,  too, 
that  the  dark  and  morbid  side  of  Puritan  faith  found  its 
last  expression  in  the  madness  of  the  witchcraft  trials. 
So  when  we  speak  of  Essex  County  the  name  brings  to 
us  all  that  is  most  characteristic  and  most  essential  in 
Puritanism. 

The  tune  has  come  when  we  ought  to  judge  the  Puritan 
fairly,  and  see  him  as  he  really  was,  —  not  tricked  out  in 
virtues  which  he  never  would  have  claimed,  nor  bedaubed 
with  vices  of  which  he  was  entirely  innocent.  There  is 
no  lack  of  opportunity  for  fit  judgment.  The  Puritan 
did  not  creep  along  the  byways  of  his  time.  He  stands 
out  in  history  as  distinctly  as  a  Greek  temple  on  a  hill- 
top against  the  brightness  of  the  clear  twilight  sky.  It 
is  a  stern  figure  enough,  lacking  many  of  the  ordinary 
graces,  but  it  is  a  manly  figure  withal,  full  of  strength 
and  force  and  purpose.  He  had  grave  faults,  but  they 
were  the  faults  of  a  strong  and  not  a  weak  nature,  and  his 


THE  PURITANS.  36 

virtues  were  those  of  a  robust  man  of  lofty  aims.  It  is  true 
that  he  drove  Roger  Williams  into  exile  and  persecuted 
the  Antinomians,  but  he  founded  successful  and  God-fear- 
ing commonwealths.  He  hanged  Quakers,  and  in  a  mad 
panic  put  old  women  to  death  as  witches,  but  he  planted  a 
college  in  the  wilderness  and  put  a  schoolhouse  in  every 
village.  He  made  a  narrow  creed  the  test  of  citizenship, 
but  he  founded  the  town-meeting,  where  every  man  helped 
to  govern  and  where  all  men  were  equal  before  the  law. 
He  banished  harmless  pleasures  and  cast  a  gloom  over 
daily  life,  but  he  formed  the  first  union  of  States  in  the 
New  England  confederacy,  and  through  the  mouth  of  one 
of  the  witchcraft  judges  uttered  an  eloquent  protest 
against  human  slavery  a  century  before  Garrison  was 
born  or  Wilberforce  began  his  agitation.  He  refused 
liberty  of  conscience  to  those  who  sought  it  beneath  the 
shadow  of  his  meeting-house,  but  he  kept  the  torch  of 
learning  burning  brightly  in  the  New  World.  In  the 
fullness  of  time  he  broke  the  fetters  which  he  had  himself 
forged  for  the  human  mind,  as  he  had  formerly  broken  the 
shackles  of  Laud  and  Charles.  He  was  rigid  in  his  pre- 
judices, and  filled  with  an  intense  pride  of  race  and  home, 
but  when  the  storm  of  war  came  upon  the  colonies  he  gave 
without  measure  and  without  stint  to  the  common  cause. 

Has  not  New  England,  the  home  of  the  Puritan, 
learned,  too,  the  lesson  of  the  times  as  the  long  proces- 
sion of  the  years  moved  by  ?  Has  she  not  learned  and 
taken  to  her  heart  the  lesson  of  this  great  commonwealth, 
which  from  the  beginning  stood  for  a  free  church  in  a 
free  state,  the  doctrine  now  accepted  throughout  the 
length  and  breadth  of  the  land?  Has  she  not  freed  her- 
self from  the  narrowing  influence  of  her  early  creeds,  and 
turned  her  intellect  to  broader  and  nobler  works  ? 


36  THE  PURITANS. 

Call  the  roll  of  our  poets  and  you  will  find  New  Eng- 
land's answer  in  the  names  of  Longfellow  and  Lowell, 
of  Emerson  and  Holmes.  Call  the  roll  of  our  historians 
and  you  will  find  her  answer  again  in  the  names  of  Pres- 
cott  and  Motley,  of  Bancroft  and  Parkman.  Turn  to  old 
Essex,  the  birthplace  and  the  centre  of  Puritanism,  and 
she  will  respond  with  the  greatest  name  of  all,  Nathaniel 
Hawthorne,  and  yet  again  with  that  beloved  name  to 
which  we  all  bowed  in  reverence  but  the  other  day,  the 
name  of  Whittier.  To-day  Essex  holds  as  her  noblest 
possession,  and  the  Puritan  States  cherish  above  all  men, 
the  gracious  poet  who  by  pure  and  noble  verse  has  been  a 
voice  and  a  guide  to  their  people.  Yet  this  poet  whom 
New  England  so  loves  and  cherishes  is  a  member  of  that 
sect  which  two  hundred  years  ago  she  persecuted  and  ex- 
iled. Is  not  this  in  itself  a  commentary  upon  the  growth 
of  New  England  above  all  tributes  of  praise  ? 

We  honor  the  Puritan,  despite  all  his  errors,  for  his 
strong,  bold  nature,  his  devotion  to  civic  freedom,  and  his 
stern,  unconquerable  will.  We  would  not  barter  our  de- 
scent from  him  for  the  pedigree  of  kings.  May  we  not 
now  say  that  we  also  honor  him  because  his  race  has 
shown  itself  able  to  break  through  its  own  trammels,  and 
"  rise  on  stepping-stones  of  their  dead  selves  to  higher 
things  "  ? 


HARVARD  COLLEGE  IN  POLITICS. 

FROM    A   SPEECH    AT  THE    MEETING    OF    THE   HARVARD 

REPUBLICAN  CLUB,  IN  TREMONT  TEMPLE, 

NOVEMBER  22,  1888. 


453356 


HARVARD  COLLEGE  IN  POLITICS. 


WE  meet  here  to-night  with  a  definite  purpose,  and  we 
meet  in  the  name  of  Harvard.  That  name  is  dear,  not 
only  to  Harvard's  children,  but  to  every  son  of  Massa- 
chusetts. The  ground  on  which  her  temples  stand  is  holy 
(ground.  It  is  sacred  to  learning,  to  patriotism,  and  to 
truth.  Fair  Harvard !  The  name  is  girt  with  traditions 
which  tell  of  the  dark  days  of  the  savage  and  the  wilder- 
ness, when  the  lamp  of  learning  was  first  lighted  on  these 
barren  shores.  They  speak  to  us  of  the  patriotism  of 
1776  and  of  1861.  They  tell  the  long  story  of  noble 
lives  unselfishly  given  to  the  cause  of  American  scholar- 
ship. 

We  do  not  gather  here  to  assert  that  we  are  the  sole 
and  only  representatives  of  the  college.  All  that  we  lay 
claim  to  is  the  right,  common  to  all  her  sons,  to  serve, 
honor,  and  defend  her  with  loyalty  and  truth.  We  do  not 
come  to  give  out  to  the  world  that  Harvard  College  sup- 
ports the  party  to  which  we  belong.  Were  such  the  pur- 
pose of  this  meeting,  I  for  one  would  have  no  part  or  lot 
in  it.  We  gather  here  to  protest,  in  the  only  way  open  to 
us,  against  the  attempt  which  has  been  made  to  drag  the 
college  into  politics,  and  to  use  her  honored  name  as  a 
makeweight  in  party  strife.  We  are  not  here  to  declare 
that  the  college  is  Republican,  but  to  stamp  as  utterly 
false  the  assertion  that  our  beloved  alma  mater  is  bound 
to  the  wheels  of  any  man's  political  chariot.  Harvard 


40  HARVARD  COLLEGE  IN  POLITICS. 

belongs  to  no  party  and  to  no  sect.  Her  doors  stand  open 
to  men  of  every  faith  and  every  creed,  and  from  her  pre- 
cincts they  go  out  into  the  world  with  her  blessing  upon 
them  to  fight  the  battle  of  life  each  in  his  own  way.  No 
man  and  no  set  of  men  have  the  right  to  speak  for  the 
great  university.  She  is  not  the  property  of  any  one. 
She  speaks  for  herself.  She  is  dedicated  to  Christ  and 
the  Church,  and  the  single  word  upon  her  broad  shield  is 
Truth.  She  asks  no  blind  subservience  to  the  doctrines 
of  any  man.  She  gives  to  all  who  come  to  her  a  liberal 
education,  not  in  the  mere  technical  sense,  but  in  the 
broad  spirit  of  tolerance  and  free  inquiry.  She  teaches 
respect  for  the  pursuits  and  opinions  of  others.  She 
frowns  upon  that  narrowness  which  imputes  unworthy 
motives  to  those  who  differ  from  it.  She  says  to  all: 
Think  for  yourselves,  love  your  country,  and  follow  truth 
as  you  see  it,  with  an  open  mind  and  an  honest  heart. 


THE  DAY  WE  CELEBRATE. 

IN  ANSWER  TO  A  TOAST   AT  THE  DINNER  OF  THE  NEW 

ENGLAND  SOCIETY  OF  BROOKLYN, 

DECEMBER  21,  1888. 


THE  DAY  WE  CELEBRATE. 


THEKE  is  one  toast,  Mr.  President,  to  which  no  son  of 
New  England  can  ever  refuse  to  respond,  one  sentiment 
to  which  he  must  always  answer.  When  the  President 
of  a  New  England  society  looks  toward  any  one  and  says, 
rt-I  give  you  Forefathers'  Day,"  even  the  most  modest 
among  us  must  rise  and  speak.  Those  two  simple  words 
have  a  world  of  meaning  to  the  children  of  the  Pilgrim 
and  the  Puritan.  Mathematics  symbolizes  the  unknown 
by  a  single  letter,  and  expresses  infinity  by  another.  So 
when  we  meet  upon  this  anniversary  our  imagination 
gathers  into  those  two  words  all  that  we  mean  by  New 
England.  For  us  they  stop  the  hurrying  tide  of  daily  life, 
and  open  the  leaves  of  memory's  book.  In  them  we  hear 
again  the  solemn  music  of  the  wind  among  New  England's 
pines.  When  those  magic  words  are  uttered,  the  murmur 
of  the  rivers  and  the  roar  of  the  mountain  torrents,  the 
crash  of  the  surf  upon  the  ledges  and  the  gentle  lapping 
of  the  summer  sea  upon  the  shingle,  sound  once  more  in 
our  ears.  Again  we  see  the  meadows  green  and  shining 
with  the  touch  of  spring,  and  the  rocky  hillsides  brilliant 
with  the  goldenrod  or  glowing  in  the  purple  flush  of 
autumn.  All  the  scenes  that  we  knew  in  childhood,  and 
that  in  manhood  we  do  not  forget,  rise  up  before  us.  It 
is  but  a  little  corner  of  the  great  land  which  we  call 
our  own,  and  yet  we  love  it. 


44  THE  DAY  WE  CELEBRATE. 

We  repeat  the  words  and  turn  again  the  pages  of  mem- 
ory ;  the  landscape  fades  and  the  figures  of  the  past  are 
before  us.  We  pass  out  of  the  eager,  bustling  present 
and  are  once  more  in  touch  with  the  strong  race  which 
clung  to  the  rocky  coast  .until  they  made  it  their  own,  and 
whose  children  and  whose  children's  children  have  forced 
their  way  across  the  continent,  Dairying  with  them  the 
principles  and  the  beliefs  of  the  forefathers. 

The  Pilgrim  and  the  Puritan  whom  we  honor  to-night 
were  men  who  did  a  great  work  in  the  world.  They  had 
their  faults  and  shortcomings,  but  they  were  not  slothful 
in  business  and  they  were  most  fervent  in  spirit.  They 
founded  prosperous  commonwealths,  and  built  up  govern- 
ments of  laws  and  not  of  men.  They  carried  the  light  of 
learning  undimmed  through  the  early  years  of  settlement. 
They  planted  a  schoolhouse  in  every  village,  and  fought 
always  a  good  fight  for  ordered  liberty  and  for  human 
rights.  Their  memories  shall  not  perish,  for 

"  the  actions  of  the  just 
Smell  sweet  and  blossom  in  the  dust." 

I  have  read,  sir,  that  the  Pilgrims  and  the  Puritans 
among  their  other  virtues  did  not  number  that  of  toler- 
ance. Hostile  critics  have  indeed  insinuated  that  there 
was  something  not  unlike  persecution  for  opinion's  sake 
in  early  New  England.  But,  however  it  may  have  been  at 
that  time,  in  these  latter  days  it  has  been  the  characteris- 
tic of  New  England  to  cherish  freedom  of  speech,  and  no- 
where is  a  greater  latitude  found  than  at  these  very  New 
England  dinners.  No  one,  so  far  as  my  observation  goes, 
ever  seems  to  feel  restricted  by  the  sentiment  to  which  he 
is  asked  to  answer,  even  when  it  is  as  novel  as  the  one 
you  have  kindly  assigned  to  me,  and  I  am  going  to  avail 
myself  of  this  liberality. 


THE  DAY  WE  CELEBRATE.  45 

There  is  a  wide  field  opened  here  before  each  one  of  us 
among  subjects  of  present  interest.  Among  other  events 
there  has  been  an  election.  I  should  like  of  course  to 
point  out  its  lessons.  Pointing  out  the  lessons  of  an  elec- 
tion, however,  although  pleasant,  is  one-sided,  for  I  have 
noticed  that  it  is  an  exercise  in  which  the  winners  are 
prone  to  indulge  without  much  aid  from  the  vanquished. 
I  should  like  to  preach  to  you  on  this  text,  for  we  New 
Englanders  have  too  much  of  the  old  Puritan  blood  not  to 
like  to  preach,  especially  to  somebody  else,  but  I  will  put 
the  temptation  aside  and  spare  your  patience. 

There  is,  however,  one  phase  of  the  election  which  I 
'think  reaches  far  beyond  party,  if  we  take  the  trouble  to 
go  a  little  beneath  the  surface.  I  refer  to  the  strong 
American  feeling,  that  was  developed  during  the  canvass, 
not  in  noise  and  shouts,  but  in  regard  to  many  vital  ques- 
tions. This  feeling  I  think  is  going  to  last.  The  War  for 
the  Union  and  the  issues  springing  from  it  have  been  set- 
tled. While  they  lasted  they  overshadowed  everything 
else.  But  all  the  time  other  questions  have  been  growing 
up  with  the  growth  of  the  nation,  and  are  now  coming  to 
the  front  for  decision.  It  is  our  duty  to  settle  them,  not 
only  in  the  right  way,  but  in  a  thoroughly  American  fash- 
ion. By  Americanism  I  do  not  mean  that  which  had  a 
brief  political  existence  more  than  thirty  years  ago.  That 
movement  was  based  on  race  and  sect,  and  was  therefore 
thoroughly  un-American,  and  failed,  as  all  un-American 
movements  have  failed  in  this  country.  True  American- 
ism is  opposed  utterly  to  any  political  divisions  resting  on 
race  and  religion.  To  the  race  or  to  the  sect  which  as 
such  attempts  to  take  possession  of  the  politics  or  the 
public  education  of  the  country,  true  Americanism  says, 
Hands  off !  The  American  idea  is  a  free  church  in  a 


46  THE  DAY  WE  CELEBRATE. 

free  state,  and  a  free  and  unsectarian  public  school  in 
every  ward  and  in  every  village,  with  its  doors  wide  open 
to  the  children  of  all  races  and  of  every  creed.  It  goes 
still  further,  and  frowns  upon  the  constant  attempt  to 
divide  our  people  according  to  origin  or  extraction.  Let 
every  man  honor  and  love  the  land  of  his  birth  and  the 
race  from  which  he  springs  and  keep  their  memory  green. 
It  is  a  pious  and  honorable  duty.  But  let  us  have  done 
with  British- Americans  and  Irish- Americans  and  German- 
Americans,  and  so  on,  and  all  be  Americans,  —  nothing 
more  and  nothing  less.  If  a  man  is  going  to  be  an 
American  at  all  let  him  be  so  without  any  qualifying 
adjectives ;  and  if  he  is  going  to  be  something  else, 
let  him  drop  the  word  American  from  his  personal  de- 
scription. 

As  there  are  sentiments  and  beliefs  like  these  to  be 
cherished,  so  there  are  policies  which  must  be  purely  and 
wholly  American  and  to  "  the  manner  born  "  if  we  would 
have  them  right  and  successful.  True  Americanism 
recognizes  the  enormous  gravity  of  the  social  and  labor 
problems  which  confront  us.  It  believes  that  the  safety 
of  the  republic  depends  upon  well-paid  labor  and  the 
highest  possible  average  of  individual  well-being.  It  be- 
lieves that  the  right  solution  of  this  problem  should  be 
sought  without  rest  and  without  stay,  and  that  no  device, 
public  or  private,  of  legislation  or  of  individual  effort, 
which  can  tend  to  benefit  and  elevate  the  condition  of  the 
great  wage-earning  masses  of  this  country,  should  be  left 
untried.  It  sets  its  face  rigidly  against  the  doctrine  of 
the  Anarchist  and  the  Communist,  who  seek  to  solve  the 
social  problems,  not  by  patient  endeavor,  but  by  brutal  de- 
struction. "  That  way  madness  lies,"  —  and  such  attempts 
and  such  teachings,  barbarous  and  un-American  as  they 


THE   DAY  WE  CELEBRATE.  47 

are,  must  and  will  be  put  down  with  a  strong  and  un- 
flinching hand,  in  the  name  of  the  home  and  the  church 
and  the  school,  and  of  all  that  makes  up  civilization  and 
the  possibility  of  human  progress. 

In  the  great  public  lands  of  the  West  an  American 
policy  sees  one  of  the  safeguards  of  the  republic.  It  op- 
poses the  further  use  of  these  lands  to  invite  immigration 
or  to  attract  speculation.  They  should  be  the  heritage  of 
the  American  people,  and  not  a  bait  to  draw  a  surplus 
population  that  we  do  not  want.  The  true  American 
policy  goes  further,  and  believes  that  immigration  should 
not  only  not  be  stimulated,  but  that  it  should  be  restricted. 
The  pauper  and  the  criminal,  the  diseased  and  the  vicious, 
the  Anarchist,  the  Communist  and  the  Mormon,  should  be 
absolutely  shut  out,  while  the  general  flow  of  immigration 
should  be  wisely  and  judiciously  checked. 

It  is  the  American  policy  to  admit  to  the  Union  the 
great  territories  of  the  West  as  fast  as  they  can  fulfill 
the  conditions  of  statehood ;  but  it  is  not  the  American 
policy  to  admit  an  un-American  territory  with  a  popula- 
tion of  Mexicans  who  speak  Spanish,  or  Utah  with  a 
population  which  defies  our  laws  and  maintains  a  barbar- 
ous and  corrupting  system  of  marriage.  When  these  two 
territories  are  thoroughly  Americanized,  they  can  come  in 
with  the  rest  and  take  part  in  our  government,  but  not 
before. 

It  is  the  American  policy  never  to  meddle  in  the  affairs 
of  other  nations,  but  to  see  to  it  that  our  attitude  toward 
the  rest  of  the  world  is  dignified,  and  that  our  flag  is  re- 
spected in  every  corner  of  the  earth,  and  backed  by  a 
navy  which  shall  be  an  honor  to  the  American  name. 

Last  and  greatest  of  all,  true  Americanism  demands 
that  the  ballot  box  everywhere  shall  be  inviolate,  even  if  it 


48  THE  DAY  WE  CELEBRATE. 

takes  the  whole  force  of  the  United  States  to  make  it  so. 
The  people's  confidence  in  the  decision  of  the  ballot  box  is 
the  only  guaranty  we  have  of  the  safety  of  our  institu- 
tions, and  we  do  not  now  guard  it  as  we  ought.  It  is  to 
these  things  that  the  American  people  are  looking;  and 
while  they  have  no  ignorant  contempt  for  the  experience 
of  other  nations,  they  are  firm  in  the  faith  that  they  must 
settle  their  own  problems  in  their  own  way,  in  accordance 
with  their  own  conditions  and  in  the  light  of  their  own 
ideas  and  beliefs.  In  that  faith  they  will  meet  the  prob- 
lems and  the  difficulties  which  they,  in  common  with  all 
mankind,  must  face.  They  will  move  on  with  a  high 
and  confident  spirit ;  they  will  extinguish  the  last  traces 
of  sectional  differences,  and  if  they  are  true  to  themselves 
they  will  yet  do  the  best  work  that  has  ever  been  given  to 
any  people  on  earth  to  do. 


INTERNATIONAL  COPYRIGHT. 


SPEECH   IN   THE   HOUSE   OF   REPRESENTATIVES, 

MAT  2,  1890. 


INTERNATIONAL  COPYRIGHT. 


MB.  SPEAKER,  all  property  is  the  creation  of  law. 

«  The  good  old  rule,  the  simple  plan, 
That  they  should  take  who  have  the  power, 
And  they  should  keep  who  can," 
+~ 
lias  been  replaced  in  the  progress  of  civilization  by  law. 

The  title  deed  of  the  sword  has  given  way  to  the  title 
deed  of  the  pen.  From  one  kind  of  possession  to  another 
the  law  has  marched  on,  extending  at  the  same  time  its 
protection,  first  given  to  the  native  of  the  land,  to  the 
stranger  within  its  gates. 

The  most  recent  advance  is  that  which  has  recognized 
property  in  the  creations  of  the  mind,  in  inventions  or  in 
books,  the  latter  of  which  is  known  as  literary  property. 
This  formal  recognition  dates  back,  with  the  English- 
speaking  race,  to  the  statute  of  Anne ;  and  for  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  years  all  who  used  "  that  ample  speech,  that 
subtle  speech,"  have  maintained  the  wisdom  of  the  legis- 
lation. Literary  property  is  recognized  also  hi  the  Con- 
stitution of  the  United  States,  and  the  justice  of  copy- 
right has  never  been  questioned  in  this  country. 

The  next  step,  as  in  the  case  of  other  property,  is  to 
accord  to  the  stranger  and  the  outsider  the  same  property 
rights  that  our  laws  accord  to  the  native  of  the  country. 
In  all  cases  of  ordinary  property  this  has  been  fully  and 
amply  done ;  but  the  last  step  in  this  path,  that  which 


52  INTERNATIONAL  COPYRIGHT. 

most  conspicuously  separates  the  civilized  from  the  half- 
civilized  or  barbarous  nation,  has  not  yet  been  taken  by 
the  United  States. 

We  do  not  yet  recognize  the  property  right  of  the  for- 
eigner in  the  product  of  his  mind,  or,  in  other  words,  in 
his  book.  To  my  thinking,  this  is  simple  dishonesty,  but 
I  do  not  propose,  sir,  to  argue  that  point.  In  the  first 
place  it  is  too  plain  a  proposition  to  invite  discussion, 
and  in  the  second  place  national  honor  does  not  seem  to 
be  the  subject  of  the  story  with  those  who  speak  in  oppo- 
sition to  this  bill.  The  opponents  of  the  bill  rest  their 
case  on  widely  different  grounds,  and  seem  only  anxious 
to  show  that  what  is  stolen  is  cheap.  There  certainly  is 
some  foundation  for  this  view  if  we  are  short-sighted  as  to 
both  the  moral  and  the  economic  effects.  I  have  no 
doubt  that  when  Rob  Roy  lifted  cattle,  cattle  were  cheaper 
among  the  MacGregors  than  they  were  immediately  after 
the  death  of  that  lamented  chieftain.  But  I  do  not  think 
that  that  fact  alters  the  ethics  of  the  question. 

"  In  vain  we  call  old  notions  fudge 

And  bend  our  conscience  to  our  dealing  ; 
The  Ten  Commandments  will  not  budge, 
And  stealing  will  continue  stealing." 

The  great  argument  that  is  made  here  in  opposition  to 
international  copyright  is  that  this  bill,  if  it  passes,  is 
going  to  make  literature  dear  to  the  American  people. 
Mr.  Speaker,  it  will  do  nothing  of  the  kind,  and  the  asser- 
tion that  it  will  do  so  is  the  barest  assumption  ever  made. 
Take  France,  for  example,  which  has  an  international 
copyright  and  has  had  for  years.  They  issue  there  several 
popular  series,  well  printed,  perfectly  readable,  at  five 
cents  and  even  two  cents  a  number  ;  and  these  series  con- 
tain the  best  literature  of  France  and  of  the  world,  not 


INTERNATIONAL  COPYRIGHT.  53 

the  offscourings  of  the  literary  gutters  of  other  countries. 
The  same  is  true  in  Germany ;  and  the  effect  of  the  law 
here  will  be,  not  to  make  literature  dear,  but  in  the  series 
of  cheap  books  simply  to  substitute  for  the  works  of  for- 
eigners the  works  of  American  authors.  In  France  and 
Germany  the  best  literature  is  the  cheapest.  With  us  the 
exact  reverse  is  the  case,  and  we  tempt  our  people  to  read 
what  is  worst  and  even  assist  them  to  do  so  by  making  it 
cheap.  In  one  word,  cheapness  is  determined  by  the  con- 
ditions of  your  market  and  by  the  demands  of  your  read- 
ing public,  and  not  by  copyright  laws. 

The  gentleman  from  Illinois  (Mr.  Payson)  produced 
the  catalogue  of  the  Seaside  Library,  and  declared  that 
nine  tenths  of  it  was  standard  literature.  He  read  the 
names  of  some  standard  authors,  of  Carlyle  and  others, 
as  if  they  and  those  like  them  filled  the  list.  Now,  see 
how  plain  a  tale  will  put  him  down.  Of  the  1,073  books 
in  the  Seaside  Library,  92  per  cent,  are  novels,  and  97 
per  cent,  are  written  by  foreigners.  The  same  propor- 
tion holds  true  in  other  cases,  as  any  one  can  see  who  will 
read  the  careful  analysis  of  Mr.  Brander  Matthews  in  his 
admirable  essay  on  "  Cheap  Books  and  Good  Books." 
Instead  of  nine  tenths  being  standard  literature  in  such 
series  as  these,  nine  tenths  are  fiction,  of  which  the 
greater  part  is  at  the  best  foolish  and  enervating,  and  at 
the  worst  positively  vicious. 

In  this  connection,  allusion  was  made  to  Dickens.  No 
book,  let  me  say  in  passing,  which  was  written  before  the 
passage  of  this  act,  is  affected  by  it.  But  the  gentleman 
says  that,  if  that  is  true,  we  must  look  to  the  Dickens  that 
is  to  come.  Suppose  another  Dickens  does  come,  or  any 
man  of  equal  genius  writing  in  the  English  tongue, 
would  the  American  people  grudge  to  him  who  ministered 


54  INTERNATIONAL  COPYRIGHT. 

so  to  their  pleasure,  with  whom  they  have  wept  and 
laughed,  who  has  lightened  their  sorrow  and  softened 
their  labors,  the  small  royalty  that  an  author  receives  on 
his  work  ?  Would  they  grudge  to-day  to  the  creator  of 
all  that  marvelous  fiction,  from  the  "  Pickwick  Papers  "  to 
"  Edwin  Drood, "  a  share  in  the  profits  which  are  now 
reaped  exclusively  by  the  publisher  ?  Mr.  Speaker,  I  do 
not  believe  it  for  one  moment.  Such  meanness  would  be 
impossible  to  the  American  people,  the  most  generous 
people  in  the  world. 

But,  sir,  in  the  brief  time  allowed  me  I  wish  to  speak 
chiefly  in  behalf  of  the  writers  of  America,  in  behalf  of 
those  who  write  and  make  books,  of  the  men  who  live  by 
the  pen,  the  journalists  and  essayists,  the  writers  of  fic- 
tion and  the  writers  of  history,  and  of  the  printers  who 
aid  them  in  the  mechanical  part  of  their  task.  They  do 
not  come  here  and  ask  you  for  subventions,  or  subsidies, 
bounties,  or  protection.  They  do  not  ask  you  to  take 
their  property  as  security,  and  issue  to  them  a  large 
amount  of  money  upon  it,  or  to  build  them  warehouses 
in  every  county.  They  ask  you  simply  for  justice  ;  that 
you  shall  not  discriminate  against  them,  and  make  still 
smaller  and  harder  opportunities  and  earnings  which  are 
never  either  large  or  easy.  That  is  all  they  ask  ;  nothing 
else. 

You  now  take  the  foreign  author's  works  and  pay  him 
nothing.  You  save  on  these  the  copyright,  which  on  an 
average  is  ten  per  cent,  royalty,  and  by  this  discrimina- 
tion you  drive  the  American  author  out  of  his  own  mar- 
ket. Speaking  as  one  who  has  followed  in  a  humble  way 
the  career  of  literature,  I  say  to  this  House  that  I  do  not 
understand  how  any  one  in  his  senses  can  imagine  that 
the  American  author  would  not  desire  the  great  circula- 


INTERNATIONAL  COPYRIGHT.  55 

tion  and  corresponding  profit  of  cheap  editions.  That  is 
really  all  we  ask  for,  and  yet  no  American  publisher  can 
undertake  to  print  an  American  book,  with  rare  exceptions, 
in  one  of  these  cheap  editions,  for  the  simple  reason  that 
he  must  pay  the  American  author  a  royalty,  while  he 
pays  the  foreign  author  none.  This  is  a  direct  and  unjust 
discrimination  against  the  American  author. 

As  for  the  combinations  that  are  talked  of,  the  monop- 
olies that  are  used  here  as  bugbears,  where  are  they  ? 

There  is  one  lying  dormant  now  in  the  cheap  reprints, 
and  if  this  bill  is  defeated  that  trust  in  cheap  reprints  will 
spring  into  life.  International  copyright  is  free  copy- 
Tight,  which  is  equal  protection  to  all,  and  that  is  the  way 
to  stop  that  trust.  The  present  partial  system  is  the  way 
to  make  trusts  and  combinations  possible,  and  nothing 
else. 

There  is  one  other  point,  more  important  than  any 
other,  which  I  wish  to  make  to  the  House,  and  that  is  that 
we  give  to  our  reading  public,  to  our  girls  and  boys,  our 
young  men  and  women,  at  the  most  impressionable  age, 
when  their  ideas  and  habits  of  thought  are  forming,  the 
very  books  that  we  ought  not  to  give  them.  We  should 
furnish  them  with  a  high  order  of  books,  not  foreign 
books,  not  cheap  books,  not  translations  by  the  myriad 
of  French  novels  dedicated,  as  Matthew  Arnold  said,  to 
the  goddess  of  "  Lubricity,"  not  second-class  English 
novels,  the  novels  of  the  snob  and  the  tuft-hunter,  written 
about  dukes  and  duchesses  and  lords  and  ladies  from 
the  point  of  view  of  a  lackey,  and  which  hold  up  ideals 
utterly  hostile  to  ours.  Not  such  stuff  as  this  should  we 
encourage  and  even  force  our  youth  to  read,  but  the  best 
books  of  all  ages,  and  especially  wholesome  American 
books,  which  will  bring  them  up  to  love  America,  which 


56  INTERNATIONAL  COPYRIGHT. 

will  fill  them  with  American  ideas,  with  reverence  and 
love  for  American  principles  of  government,  and  with  re- 
spect for  American  society,  instead  of  admiration  for  sys- 
tems of  government  and  society  wholly  alien  to  their  own. 
Nothing  is  cheap  that  is  false.  Let  us  be  true  to  ourselves 
and  to  the  youth  of  the  Republic. 

In  their  name  I  ask  for  a  favorable  vote  on  this  bill. 
I  ask  for  it  in  the  name  of  the  printers,  forty  thousand 
of  whom  stand  behind  this  bill,  because  they  see  that  it 
will  increase  the  work  and  the  wages  of  the  American 
workmen.  I  hold  in  my  hand  a  telegram  from  a  man 
who  once  stood  at  the  case,  and  who  now  holds  an  hon- 
orable place  among  you  here,  in  which  he  says :  "  Ask 
for  leave  to  print  on  the  copyright  bill.  I  hope  it  will 
pass.  AMOS  J.  CUMMINGS." 

I  ask  for  it  in  the  name  of  every  man  who  uses  a  pen, 
whether  on  the  daily  press  or  in  making  a  book,  of  the  men 
who  minister  to  your  information,  to  your  amusement  and 
to  your  instruction.  Think  what  we  owe  to  literature  ;  a 
debt  which  never  can  be  paid.  "  Books,"  says  Dr.  John- 
son, "  help  us  to  enjoy  life  or  teach  us  to  endure  it." 
What  a  service  is  this.  Be  just,  at  least  to  those  who 
help  us  to  enjoy  and  teach  us  to  endure.  I  ask  it  most 
of  all  in  the  name  of  the  national  honor.  As  an  American 
I  deplore  the  spectacle  of  the  United  States  alone  among 
the  civilized  nations  taking  the  highwayman's  attitude, 
robbing  the  foreign  and  the  native  author  alike,  and 
injuring  their  own  readers  beyond  the  power  of  words  to 
describe.  In  the  name  of  all  these,  of  printers,  writers, 
and  readers,  and  of  the  good  name  of  the  Republic  itself, 
I  hope  that  the  bill  will  pass. 


THE  CIVILIZATION  OF  THE  PUBLIC 
SCHOOL.    A  REPLY. 

SPEECH  IN  THE  HOUSE  OP  REPRESENTATIVES, 
JANUARY  13, 1890. 


THE  CIVILIZATION  OF  THE  PUBLIC  SCHOOL. 
A  REPLY. 


The  House  being  in  Committee  of  the  Whole  on  the  state  of  the 
Union  and  having  under  consideration  the  bill  (H.  R.  12573)  making 
appropriations  for  the  support  of  the  Army  for  the  fiscal  year  ending 
-June  30,  1892,  and  for  other  purposes,  — 

ME.  LODGE  said : 

MB.  CHAIKMAN  :  I  find  by  the  Record  of  this  morning 
that  while  I  was  absent  from  the  House  yesterday  after- 
noon on  business  connected  with  the  Naval  Committee,  of 
which  I  am  a  member,  I  was  honored  by  a  personal  attack 
from  the  gentleman  from  Missouri  [Mr.  Stone].  The 
carefully  prepared  sentences  of  that  effort  show  much 
labor,  and  it  was  evidently  the  intention  of  the  gentleman 
to  be  severe.  He  has,  however,  mistaken  abuse  for  sever- 
ity; and  into  a  competition  of  coarse  personal  abuse  I 
have  no  intention  of  entering.  In  that  field  I  willingly 
yield  to  him  the  supremacy. 

I  have  never  indulged  in  personalities  in  debate.  I 
have  always  found  it  possible  to  discuss  public  measures 
without  personal  allusions  to  the  gentlemen  who  have  dif- 
fered from  myself  in  opinion.  From  that  habit  I  do  not 
intend  to  deviate  now  or  at  any  time.  I  am  always  ready 
to  concede  to  gentlemen  who  differ  from  me  the  same 
sincerity  of  motive  and  honesty  of  purpose  that  I  claim 
for  myself.  But  at  the  same  time  I  have  a  large  char- 


60          CIVILIZATION  OF  THE  PUBLIC   SCHOOL. 

ity,  Mr.  Chairman,  for  those  gentlemen  whose  mental 
limitations  are  such  that  they  can  reach  notoriety  only 
by  indulging  in  personalities.  The  head  and  front  of 
my  offending,  it  appears,  is  that  I  am  in  part  responsible 
for  the  Federal  election  bill.  That  bill  was  reported  from 
my  committee.  With  my  colleague  from  Illinois  [Mr. 
Rowell]  and  other  gentlemen  I  helped  to  frame  it.  With 
their  aid  I  helped  to  pass  it  through  the  House. 

Whatever  the  defects  or  imperfections  of  that  measure 
may  be,  I  believe  most  thoroughly  in  the  principle  which 
it  involves.  It  is  the  principle  of  honest  elections  and  of 
the  protection  of  the  ballot  box,  not  in  the  South,  not  in 
the  North,  but  throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  the 
land.  With  that  principle  I  am  always  ready  and  always 
proud  to  be  identified.  I  believe  that  the  Republican 
party  can  make  no  greater  mistake  after  its  past  and  its 
pledges  than  to  fail  now  either  here  or  elsewhere  in  loyalty 
to  the  doctrine  of  protection  to  the  ballot  box.  I  am 
quite  ready  to  let  my  record  stand  on  that  question,  and  it 
does  not  disturb  me  in  the  least  that  gentlemen  of  the 
other  side  should  assail  me  on  account  of  it.  It  only 
shows  that  the  shaft  was  well  aimed  and  that  it  has  gone 
home. 

Now,  Mr.  Chairman,  the  gentleman  seems  to  be  annoyed 
that  I  had  a  great-grandfather.  George  Cabot  was  a  re- 
spectable, honorable,  and  not  altogether  undistinguished 
man,  and  I  am  very  proud  of  his  memory,  although  he 
held  some  views  in  politics  with  which  I  do  not  personally 
agree.  No  attack  upon  New  England,  however,  would 
ever  be  complete  without  an  allusion  to  the  Hartford  Con- 
vention, of  which  he  was  president.  It  has  been  the  un- 
failing resource  of  Democratic  statesmen,  when  at  a  loss 
to  say  something  disagreeable  about  New  England,  for  the 


CIVILIZATION  OF  THE  PUBLIC  SCHOOL.         61 

kst  seventy-five  years,  and  I  suppose  it  will  continue  to 
serve  their  turn  for  many  more  years  to  come,  especially 
as  the  members  of  that  convention  are  unable  to  resent 
anything  that  may  be  said  of  them. 

The  attitude  of  New  England  Federalists  from  1807 
to  1815  is  one  with  which  I  have  little  sympathy  and 
have  had  less  and  less  as  I  have  gone  on  in  life ;  but  gen- 
tlemen on  the  other  side  seem  to  forget  that  the  position 
taken  by  the  Hartford  Convention  was  but  a  repetition 
of  the  position  taken  by  Jefferson  and  Madison  in  the 
Virginia  and  Kentucky  resolutions.  It  was,  whether  you 
,  call  it  "nullification  "  or  "  interposition,"  the  doctrine  that 
'State  rights  are  capable  of  overruling  the  power  and  the 
laws  of  the  National  Government.  To  that  principle  I 
am  opposed,  whether  it  emanated  in  times  past  from  Vir- 
ginia or  Kentucky  or  New  England.  But  it  ill  becomes 
representatives  of  the  South,  even  when  they  are  most 
at  a  loss  for  an  argument,  to  rail  at  New  England  about 
a  doctrine  which  first  found  root  in  their  soil  and  which 
there  and  there  alone  flourished  and  grew  until  it  blos- 
somed into  the  red  flower  of  rebellion. 

Mr.  Chairman,  the  gentleman  from  Missouri  also  saw 
fit  in  the  course  of  his  remarks  to  assail  a  Senator  from 
my  State,  who  could  by  no  possibility  reply  to  him  on 
this  floor.  For  a  speech  less  violent  in  language,  relating 
to  another  Senator,  this  House  saw  fit  to  take  very  decisive 
action  of  censure.  I  leave  it  to  the  House  to  say  whether 
the  time  has  not  come  now  to  repeat  that  action. 

The  Senator  from  my  State  to  whom  the  allusion  was 
made  would  not  wish  me,  nor  would  he  deem  it  necessary, 
that  I  should  enter  into  any  defense  of  him  from  such  an 
attack  as  that  made  here  yesterday.  Long  after  the  gen- 
tleman who  made  it  has  passed  from  this  House  into  that 


62         CIVILIZATION  OF  THE  PUBLIC  SCHOOL. 

forgetfulness  which  awaits  him  and  perhaps  most  of  us, 
the  name  of  the  Senator  to  whom  he  referred  will  remain 
in  the  history  of  the  United  States  as  that  of  a  ripe  scholar 
and  a  patriotic,  far-seeing  statesman,  identified  with  great 
policies  and  useful  measures,  who  would  have  been  an 
honor  to  any  State  or  any  country.  Still  less,  Mr.  Chair- 
man, should  I  deem  it  necessary  on  this  occasion  to  de- 
fend either  New  England  or  Massachusetts.  The  history 
of  Massachusetts  is  before  the  world  and  is  known  of  all 
men.  As  Webster  said :  "  She  needs  no  eulogium  ;  there 
she  stands ;  behold  her  and  judge  for  yourselves." 

There,  too,  is  her  great  record  of  service  to  the  cause  of 
human  rights  and  human  liberty.  There  are  the  names 
of  her  statesmen  and  of  her  soldiers  shining  ever  with  a 
lustre  no  slanders  can  dim.  There  are  her  lasting  services 
to  the  advancement  of  the  highest  civilization.  They  are 
all  written  in  the  pages  of  the  history  of  the  United 
States.  They  stand  there  forever  for  the  considerate  judg- 
ment of  mankind ;  and  her  people  have  no  fear  of  the 
verdict. 

Mr.  Chairman,  the  gentleman  saw  fit  in  what  was  in- 
tended, I  suppose,  to  be  one  of  his  most  wounding  pas- 
sages, to  refer  to  me  as  the  "  Oscar  Wilde  of  American 
statesmanship."  It  was  a  perfectly  safe  attack,  for  it  is 
quite  impossible  for  me  to  retort  in  kind,  as  I  am  not 
aware  that  the  gentleman  is  the  proprietor  of  any  kind  of 
statesmanship  whatever.  I  suppose  the  allusion  was  really 
meant  to  convey  the  idea  that  the  statesmanship  of  Mas- 
sachusetts and  of  New  England  is  "  effeminate."  That  is  a 
very  easy  accusation  to  make.  It  is  a  view  which  natur- 
ally is  taken  of  a  high  civilization  by  a  lower  one.  It  is 
the  view  which  would  naturally  be  taken  of  the  civilization 
of  the  public  school  by  the  civilization  of  the  shotgun. 


CIVILIZATION  OF  THE  PUBLIC  SCHOOL.         63 

But  let  me  say,  Mr.  Chairman,  that  when  the  two  civili- 
zations came  in  armed  contact  there  was  nothing  "  effemi- 
nate "  then  in  the  civilization  of  the  public  school  and  of 
personal  liberty.  The  civilization  of  the  shotgun  and  of 
the  slave  went  down  before  it  in  bloody  ruin,  never  to 
be  restored. 


MASSACHUSETTS. 

FROM  CLOSING   SPEECH   IN  DEBATE  WITH   HON.  JOHN  E. 
RUSSELL,  TREMONT  TEMPLE,  OCTOBER  23, 1891. 


MASSACHUSETTS. 


IT  is  a  high  honor  to  be  Governor  of  Massachusetts. 
To  all  who  dwell  within  her  confines,  the  old  State  is  very, 
very  dear.  She  has  a  right  to  our  love  and  pride.  "  Be- 
hold her  and  judge  for  yourselves."  Here  she  is,  a  Queen 
jAinong  commonwealths,  enthroned  amidst  her  hills  and 
streams,  with  the  ocean  at  her  feet.  Trade  is  in  her 
marts  and  prayer  within  her  temples.  Her  cities  stir  with 
busy  life.  Her  wealth  grows,  beyond  the  dreams  of  ava- 
rice. Her  rivers  turn  the  wheels  of  industry,  and  the  smoke 
of  countless  chimneys  tells  the  story  of  the  inventor's  gen- 
ius and  the  workman's  skill.  But  the  material  side  is  the 
least  of  it.  We  rejoice  mightily  in  her  prosperity,  but 
our  love  and  pride  are  touched  by  nobler  themes.  We 
love  the  old  State.  The  sand  hills  of  the  Cape,  with  the 
gulls  wheeling  over  the  waste  of  waters  ;  the  gray  ledges 
and  green  pastures  of  Essex,  with  the  seas  surging  forever 
on  her  rocks  ;  the  broad  and  fruitful  valleys  of  the  Con- 
necticut ;  the  dark  hills  and  murmuring  streams  of  Berk- 
shire, have  to  us  a  tender  charm  no  other  land  can  give. 
They  breathe  to  us  the  soft  message  that  tells  of  home  and 
country.  Still  it  is  something  more  than  the  look  of  hill 
and  dale,  something  deeper  than  habit  which  stirs  our  hearts 
when  we  think  of  Massachusetts.  Behind  the  outward 
form  of  things  lies  that  which  passeth  show.  It  is  in  the 
history  of  Massachusetts,  in  the  lives  of  her  great  men, 


68  MASSACHUSETTS. 

in  the  sacrifices,  in  the  deeds  and  in  the  character  of  her 
people  that  we  find  the  true  secret  of  our  love  and  pride. 
We  may  not  explain  it  even  to  ourselves,  but  it  is  there 
in  the  good  old  name,  and  flushes  into  life  at  the  sight 
of  the  white  flag.  Massachusetts  !  Utter  but  the  word 
and  what  memories  throng  upon  her  children!  Here 
came  the  stern,  God-fearing  men  to  find  a  home  and 
found  a  State.  Here,  almost  where  we  stand,  on  the 
edge  of  the  wilderness,  was  placed  the  first  public  school. 
Yonder,  across  the  river,  where  the  track  of  the  savage 
still  lingered  and  the  howl  of  the  wolf  was  still  heard,  was 
planted  the  first  college.  Here,  through  years  of  peril 
and  privation,  with  much  error  and  failure,  but  ever 
striving  and  marching  onward,  the  Puritans  built  their 
State.  It  was  this  old  town  that  first  resisted  England 
and  bared  its  breast  to  receive  the  hostile  spears.  In  the 
fields  of  Middlesex  the  first  blood  was  shed  in  the  Amer- 
ican Revolution.  On  the  slopes  of  Bunker  Hill  the 
British  troops  first  recoiled  under  American  fire.  Mas- 
sachusetts was  the  first  great  Commonwealth  to  resist  the 
advance  of  slavery,  and  in  the  mighty  war  for  the  Union 
she  had  again  the  sad  honor  to  lay  the  first  blood  offering 
on  the  altar  of  the  nation.  This  is  the  State  that  Win- 
throp  founded.  Warren  died  for  her  liberties  and  Web- 
ster defended  her  good  name.  Sumner  bore  stripes  in 
behalf  of  her  beliefs,  and  her  sons  gave  their  lives  on  every 
battlefield  for  the  one  flag  she  held  more  sacred  than  her 
own.  She  has  fought  for  liberty.  She  has  done  justice 
between  man  and  man.  She  has  sought  to  protect  the 
weak,  to  save  the  erring,  to  raise  the  unfortunate.  She 
has  been  the  fruitful  mother  of  ideas  as  of  men.  Her 
thought  has  followed  the  sun  and  been  felt  throughout 
the  length  of  the  land.  May  we  not  say,  as  Charles  Fox 


MASSACHUSETTS.  69 

said  of  Switzerland,  "Every  man  should  desire  once 
in  his  life  to  make  a  pilgrimage  to  Massachusetts,  the 
land  of  liberty  and  peace  ?  "  She  has  kept  her  shield  un- 
spotted and  her  honor  pure.  To  us,  her  loving  children, 
she  is  a  great  heritage  and  a  great  trust. 

It  is  a  noble  thing  to  be  Governor  of  such  a  State. 
And  let  it  never  be  forgotten  that  it  is  no  light  matter 
to  hold  the  place  once  held  by  John  A.  Andrew,  when 
he  "  stood  as  high  priest  between  the  horns  of  the  altar 
and  poured  out  upon  it  the  best  blood  of  Massachusetts." 


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